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Installing Salix Package In Slackware Using slapt-get

Posted on: 29 January 2017

By: admin

Salix is a Linux distribution derived from Slackware. In its official website, it is said that "...Salix is also fully backwards compatible with Slackware, so Slackware users can benefit from Salix repositories, which they can use as an "extra" quality source of software for their favorite distribution...". Because of that statement, I'm interested to install some Salix packages into my Slackware 14.1 64 bit system. Although the packages are binary, not source, I feel safe to install it because the source is from Salix official repository so it's trusted. I decide to install Midori web browser from Salix so I don't have to compile it and all its dependecies from source which can take a long time.

Install slapt-get

The first thing I did was installing the slapt-get from https://software.jaos.org/. I download the slapt-get 0.10.2t Slackware64-14.1 package file because I'm using the Slackware 14.1 64 bit. By the way, slapt-get is the unofficial package management for Slackware which can track the installation package dependencies automatically (similar behavior like Debian's apt-get). It is the default package management for Salix.

installpkg slapt-get-0.10.2t-x86_64-1.tgz

Configure slapt-get

After installing slapt-get, we need to configure the repository URL first so slapt-get knows where to download the packages. Some repository mirrors are listed at https://docs.salixos.org/wiki/Repository_mirrors. You can browse it then choose the correct URL path that suits your operating system type (32 bit or 64 bit and also your Slackware version). I choose to use this URL http://slackware.uk/salix/x86_64/14.2/ as the repository source. The correct path should contains some files such as PACKAGES.txt and CHECKSUMS.md5 inside it.

To add the repository URL, simply edit the slapt-get configuration file, /etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc, using nano or another text editor. Then add the URL to the SOURCE variable.

SOURCE=http://slackware.uk/salix/x86_64/14.1/

After that, run the slapt-get update command to retrieve the package database from Salix repository.

slapt-get --update

Install Midori Using slapt-get

Now, we are ready to install Midori web browser using slapt-get. Please type the following command.

slapt-get --install --prompt midori

The --prompt option will display confirmation message before we continue the installation. As we can see in the picture below, slapt-get will give us the list of the package dependencies.

If we confirmed the installation, slapt-get will start to download the all required packages then install them.

Just in the short of time, the installation is completed. Then in my KDE menu Midori is appeared, so I click the menu to launch it.